It has made me rethink my previous plan. I was going to wait for the N97 but now I have seen web OS and been told how the pre uses the latest arm processor which runs at 3 times the speed of the N97 or iphone the N97 no longer seems so attractive. I will keep waiting now, I think the appearance of the pre will cause the industry to really innovate. The coming year should hopefully see some competition for the present leaders in the market.

The Pre MIGHT be the salvation of poor Palm- a new Palm, an iPhone killer, a major increase in public awareness all in one?

If you score any for reviews, I would love to do a ‘second opinion’ on it- and I even have Sprint!

I just got back from CES, I desperately wanted to play with the Pre, but palm was nowhere to be found. No booth, only an announcement. Very sad day for me. On the bright side the entire Windows 7 display crashed while the sale guy was telling me how much more stable it was then vista.

1. Does it have on board apps compatible with existing Calendar & Memos data?

2. Does it have a removable flash card? (My Treo 680 has a 16GB card (almost full) which will be replaced with 32GB as soon as prices come down to something more reasonable.)

3. Removable battery?

Greg.

I see that it has a camera – and GPS and that’s nice. It also has some other nice features like web access and email. My 8 year old Kyocera 7135 has both, even though I have to carry three batteries if I’m going to use them.

Overall a fair start. but still disappointing. I want my graffiti window back !!

drf

(Well, in theory I’ll live with it, anyway… I doubt I’ll have one of these any time soon, since I use AT&T, and also recently ditched my Centro for unusably poor RF performance at my home, so even when they release a GSM version I’ll have to find out how well it works before jumping on it.)

The webOS, at least as I understand it, is it supports web languages as an SDK, but also has it’s own full programming environment using whatever language they choose, probably some variant of C. God I hope it’s not Java.

“That looks really nice.”

“Part of me hopes it works really well with the Mac ecosystem.”

“Wait … they’re calling it the Pre? Pre-what? That makes me want to wait for whatever’s coming next.”

“They’re touting CSS/HTML/XML as their SDK? Apple tried that and got absolutely skewered by just about everyone. Palm had better get to work on native app functionality quickly.”

“Ed Colligan needs to get his head out of his the clouds.”

This final thought occurred to me as I read a reporter’s account of Ed’s reaction to her suggestion that the Pre be priced aggressively against the iPhone. His reply was something along the lines of “why should we do that when we have the superior product?” Bold words for something that hasn’t even launched yet, compared to the most successful smartphone of the past couple of years. Too bold, I think.

I’m sure we’ll see a flood of small apps, just like the flood of widgets out there for the desktop. But when it comes to more substantial development, i see no reason to believe that the new Palm OS won’t require just as much effort and commitment as any other platform. It’s just another language, with another UI layer, and it will have just as many platform-specific APIs and quirks as the iPhone, Windows Mobile, and Android.

Don’t get me wrong, I think building a platform on web technologies is a good idea, especially when you are designing something from scratch like Palm had to. But I think the talk of how much easier it will be is at least 50% marketing — serious mobile developers will decide to develop for the new Palm based on its market share and capabilities, not a factor as relatively minor as what language it uses.

On this same train of thought, I do wonder whether we’ll see a preponderance of network-required apps, though — with no phoneless PDAs running this, will developers find it easier to ignore offline usability? I hope not.

Being a long time Palm fan ( I originally had a Palm Pilot Pro!), having seen the demo videos I feel like I am channeling Big Kev – ” I’m excited!!!).

One let down is no 3G – needs to be 3G for Australia.

Some clarification:
3G = 3rd Generation cellular services, which include EVDO on the Sprint and Verizon side and HSDPA/UMTS on the AT&T and T-Mobile side. Let’s get our terms straight here people! The Pre very definitely has 3G, and it’s the faster EVDO Rev A variant.

Michael

I for one think it’s great that Apple licensed ActiveSync so that people could use iPhones with their work or hosted exchange services. For me personally, I was already paying for .Mac, so it was a bonus to get the push sync capabilities of MobileMe with the new service, now that the bugs are mostly worked out of it.

This is coming from someone who ‘grew up’ using Palm devices, I had a Palm III, a Palm V, a LifeDrive and a Treo 680. If palm would have kept up with the times and not let the old OS die on the vine, I’d probably still be a palm user. If my iPhone dies an ugly death, and a GSM version of the pre comes out, I’ll probably swap back to Palm.

–Matt